'Role for private recruiters' in employment plans

Public and private sector recruitment agencies must join forces to help highly skilled UK workers return to employment, it has been suggested.

According to Tom Hadley, director of external affairs for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), graduates and other highly skilled workers, who may be sceptical about the services offered by government job centres, should be referred to private sector recruiters.

They are more likely to have strong relations with potential future employers in the appropriate industries, he claims.

Mr Hadley adds: "The concrete proposal that we have made, and government have taken on board, is the importance of public sector employment centres working in partnership with the private sector recruitment agencies.

According to the Office for National Statistics' Labour Market: Unemployment rate research, there was a fall in both the number of people in employment and the employment rate between August and October 2008.

The employment rate for people of working age was 74.2 per cent for the three months to October, down 0.4 per cent both from the previous quarter and over the year.